Reason never exists in this world without feeling because of the way humans are made. To ignore either is to court disaster, but people never learn, they always want to swing absolute in one direction or the other. There's value in both the Age of Reason and the Age of Romance and there are dangers in both as well. Better to strike a balance.

Our present day problem is that a tribal and totalitarian religion has declared war against us.

And they use our Romanticism against us.

In particular they use our moral relativism against us.

For historical reasons they never went through the Enlightenment, and they reject Enlightenment values such as the separation of Church and State, the equality of women and men, as well as freedom of speech.

And they reject any rational criticism of their holy book. Such criticism is not only seen as offensive but blasphemous. And the ordained penalty for such a blasphemous offense is death.

And they put this death penalty into practice. For instance they slaughtered Theo van Gogh in front of his home for criticising their holy book.

And with a knife they pinned a manifesto and a threat to the chest of the slaughtered Theo.

In this threat they promised to kill Ayaan Hirsi Ali for the same offense, as well as apostasy.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is in Australia as I write under the strictest security to guard her life.

She is a brave, intelligent and charming women and a true heroine of our time.

She has written a number of excellent books which I highly recommend.

In particular she enjoins us to defend the values of the Enlightenment against barbarism.

Romanticism is merely to make Westerners feel good while destroying the lives of aboriginal children and their mothers.

Wow. That is as over-the-top as it gets.

I also come back to the fact that "Enlightened" thinking created a supposedly scientific basis for racial and cultural supremacy, as well as eugenics for dealing with such "problems" as inferior genetics.

Go to sleep, iguana.

_________________________________INTP. Type 1>6>5. sx/sp.Live and let live will just amount to might makes right

I don't know enough about Austrialian aborigines to say if your claims about their culture are true or if they were always true. If true, how much is a result of the assualt on their culture and family structure? Was it always true?

Civilization can be looked at and negatives picked out of it as well. Children are still abused and molested in civilized countries and the system of civilized society manipluated and used to get away with it. There are psychopaths and sick people in every culture.

Originally Posted by Magic Poriferan

I also come back to the fact that "Enlightened" thinking created a supposedly scientific basis for racial and cultural supremacy, as well as eugenics for dealing with such "problems" as inferior genetics.

Yes, absolutely, the hierarchies of Darwinistic evolution used to justify eugenics and eventually ethnic cleansing etc. Anything can be used to justify evil.